BEIJING/JIAXING, China — Several times a week, kung fu teacher Ren Ruzhi enters a ring to spar with a bovine opponent around five times his weight and capable of killing him.

Ren's mixing of martial arts and bullfighting worries his mother, but the 24-year-old has never been hurt. Besides, he says, grappling with a snorting bull is exciting.

"It symbolizes the bravery of a man," Ren told Reuters in Jiaxing in China's eastern province of Zhejiang.

Unlike Spain's more famous sport, the Chinese variant of bullfighting involves no swords or gore but instead fuses the moves of wrestling with the skill and speed of kung fu to bring down beasts weighing up to 400 kg (882 lb).

Han calls the bullfighting style he teaches "the explosive power of hard 'qigong'", saying it combines the skill and speed of martial arts with traditional wrestling techniques.

Typically, a fighter approaches the bull head on, grabs its horns and twists, turning its head until the bull topples over.

Although he says his bulls get better treatment than the animals involved in the Spanish sport, animal rights activists believe Chinese bullfighting is still painful for the animals and cruel as a form of entertainment. — Reuters